Great Minds…

They say great minds think alike – and so it would seem SUPERMANIA was not alone in its mission to plug a 20+ year hole in the collectors album of Superman trading cards.

While SUPERMANIA and A Tribute To Christopher Reeve had been collaborating over a two-year period to produce an authentic-looking set of ‘Movie Photo Cards’ based on Superman IV: The Quest For Peace in the UK, talented and prolific artist Andrew Owen – unbeknownst to us – was working on a similar project down under.

Though artwork and accompanying text chronicling the full, unedited cut of the film had indeed been completed (see early examples here) by the UK team, the project had stalled due to the unavailability of vintage-style card on which to print. During the trial and error with various printers a search for cards from the era quite randomly threw up the images above.

At first there was disappointment that despite all our efforts we had been pipped to the post as here, evidently, were a set of equally accomplished replica trading cards for Superman IV. Not only that, there were authentic wrappers and even a box – perfectly rendered and way beyond the ambition of what we had planned.

Rather than admit defeat and let years of hard work go to waste, SUPERMANIA sensed an opportunity and reached out to Andrew in the hope of extending the two-man team to three. Thankfully Andrew proved instantly to be a gentleman and fellow Superfan and, upon seeing our efforts for himself, volunteered his help.

It is therefore with considerable delight that SUPERMANIA can confirm the card set is coming soon and will now comprise of a set of 99 cards, two loose wrappers (third pic) and a box (top pic). Although dates and availability are TBA we hope to have the project done by Christmas. All art is subject to change (please note the cards in the photo’s above are Andrew’s designs – NOT the final cards that will be offered here) and all updates will be featured exclusively here…

It seems to have taken an age to get this to where we wanted it to be but in order to have it stand side by side with previous sets this couldn’t be a quick & cheap effort. Hopefully when this set does see print it will fulfill its brief and indistinguishable from the real thing…